Woody Harrelson is the three-time Oscar nominated actor who has earned acclaim for both his comedic and dramatic work over the span of a 30-year career.
Harrelson started on the Broadway stage as an understudy in the hit Neil Simon play “Biloxi Blues.” Just months after that play opened Harrelson would become a household name when he started playing the role of Woody Boyd in the fourth season of the highly successful sitcom “Cheers.” Harrelson faced a daunting assignment when he joined the show since he was replacing the popular Nicholas Colasanto who played Coach on the first three seasons but sadly passed away during the show’s run. Harrelson clicked with the cast and audience and went on to receive five Emmy nominations for “Cheers” and won the 1989 Best Comedy Supporting Actor award for his role as the naïve bartender Woody Boyd.
That success on “Cheers” launched Harrelson into a lengthy film career even before the show ended its 11-year run. That included his Academy Awards nominations for “The People vs. Larry Flynt” (Best Actor in 1996) and “The Messenger” (Best Supporting Actor in 2009) and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” (Best Supporting Actor in 2017).
His movie choices have included popular hits such as “White Men Can’t Jump,” “Indecent Proposal,” “Kingpin,” “Zombieland,” and “The Hunger Games” franchise plus critical smashes like “The Thin Red Line,” “North Country,” “No Country for Old Men,” and “Seven Psychopaths.”
He also returned to television in recent years earning two more Emmy nominations for his role in the TV movie Game Change (which chronicled the 2008 presidential race and the choice of Sarah Palin to run as Vice President) and one for his role in the mini-series “True Detective,” which became a national obsession in 2014 for HBO. He also received an additional Emmy nomination for a guest appearance he made on “Frasier” where he recreated his role from “Cheers.”
NORTH COUNTRY (2005)
Harrelson has a quieter and more low-key role than he usually plays as a lawyer helping female factor workers file sexual harassment lawsuits over the way they have been treated in a Minnesota iron mine. Theron and McDormand received Oscar nominations for the film but Harrelson is equally effective in his scenes where he is cross examining the people being sued.
THE HUNGER GAMES (2012)
Harrelson plays Haymitch Abernathy a man who won the hunger games twenty-five years prior to the film’s setting but whose life has degenerated into decades of alcoholism due to his unhappiness with having to participate in the games. By virtue of his win he is obligated to coach the lead characters played by Lawrence and Hutcherson. The Christian Science Monitor praised the director Gary Ross for casting Harrelson and called the choice of him for the role as “dead right.”
WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES (2017)
Critics largely thought that Harrelson’s role as The Colonel was done as a bit of a homage to the Colonel character Marlon Brando played in “Apocalypse Now.” Harrelson plays a highly mentally unstable man who tries to force the apes off their land that they are now peacefully inhabiting. It’s a real over the top performance and Harrelson seems to be having a ball recreating Brando’s infamous work.
